Someday

If you tell a child that someday this or that will happen, they have a splendid vision of things that they are pretty much sure to happen. There is pleasant anticipation.

Twenty-year-olds plan for someday with excitement. Someday I will be a rich business owner, or someday I will have a couple of beautiful children and a lovely home. The dreams are endless. Someday has potential.

For forty-year-olds, the term someday leans more to the wonderful things they will be able to do when their careers are over, the kids are grown and days are filled with leisure.

And their visions of retirement are grand, the kind storybooks are made of.

But to someone in her 60s, the word someday grows sad and lonely.

Sure, a person could expect to live 20-30 years more, but it’s also just as possible she won’t.

My husband, for instance, is still collecting things (you wouldn’t believe) for someday.

I keep telling him that someday for us is here. Our yard is filled with someday projects, and I fear someday is never going to arrive for those projects.

Now is the time to finish that model railroad set up. He can no longer just collect parts and envision what it will be like to have that little locomotive running around that track he has in the basement.

It’s time to get that train on that track, but will he?

You can’t continue to collect empty pill bottles to organize your nuts and bolts, when you are never going to be using those nuts and bolts or actually organizing them.

The time for organization is over.

The saddest, I think, are people in long-term care facilities who wait patiently for that visit from someone who said “someday we’ll come and see you.”

How many times does that someday never arrive? Too many.

Here’s the thing… Sometimes saying someday is just making an empty promise to appease someone. If you never have any intention of following through, please don’t say it. Especially if someday is already here.